Obamacare Repeal Fails

March 24, 2017 — Ron Chusid

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are both losers.

In a spectacular political defeat for Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, the legislation to repeal Obamacare has been pulled as it was clear it was going down to defeat. It was far easier for Republicans to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act over fifty times in the past when they knew it would be vetoed if it made it through both houses of Congress than it is now that they would be held accountable for a replacement. The New York Times reports:

House Republican leaders, facing a revolt among conservatives and moderates in their ranks, pulled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act from consideration on the House floor Friday in a major defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency.

“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, conceded.

The failure of the Republicans’ three-month blitz to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement exposed deep divisions in the Republican Party that the election of a Republican president could not mask. It cast a long shadow over the ambitious agenda that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders had promised to enact once their party assumed power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Paul Ryan apparently was surprised to find that it is complicated to sell Americans on health care plan which will cost them more and provide less.